Research

Ongoing Research Projects

Transnational social and economic development of German and Polish metropolitan regions

The Collaboration focuses on the question how Polish and German cities and metropolitan regions are developing under the influence of economic and social globalization processes. Specific local framework conditions, the role of economic and cultural creativity for specific urban development processes, and how social geographic perspectives can contribute to the development of space changes at different spatial urban levels are also considered.

Everyday practices and identity constructions in the field of tension of refugee camps. Surveillance, governmentality and action strategies.

Tobias Breuckmann is researching the local negotiation of the EU border regime in and around the Hot Spot Camp on Lesvos, Greece in his current PhD project. The theoretical basis is the theory of governmentality, with a corresponding focus on the mutual and dynamic negotiation of government practices. With a view to social and political geography, the question of how spaces of governance are (re)constructed and which counter-spaces in the sense of stubborn migrations are created in interaction is examined in particular.

The production of urban spaces in a perpetuated crisis. Austerity, the reconfiguration of social reproduction and municipalist alternatives in Berlin and Barcelona.

The production of urban life under crisis conditions is the result of many conflicts over the distribution of social wealth. For the capital side, urbanization serves to shift crises in time and space, politics strives to create a consensus for society as a whole, and many people in cities are confronted with the everyday consequences of the crisis. Alternative forms of social reproduction, urban everyday life and political representation also emerge from this. The examples of Berlin and Barcelona will be used to examine the scope for such alternatives and whether institutionalised urban policy is possible beyond macroeconomic and political constraints.

Living (Transit)Spaces in the Maghreb: Space productions in the context of EU border and security policy and so-called transit migration

For several decades the irregular migration from Africa to Europe has attracted attention from numerous politicians and scholars across different disciplines. Europe and its security policy have been of particular importance. By offering a different perspective on this topic, this dissertation tries to capture the problem more accurate. Considering that most of the migrants do not succeed in crossing the Mediterranean, the Maghreb and the migrants, who settle down in North Africa for some time, are the main focus of interest. The destinations of these so-called transit migrants are the cities, which offer them different ways to finance their temporary stay and a possible onward journey, but in turn are transformed by the migrants. Due to their mostly undocumented status, the migrants face unemployment or employment in the irregular sector, which in turn can lead to several negative side effects, such as illegal labor, prostitution, drug trafficking, human smuggling and human trafficking spreading out in the cities.

The negotiation of dispossession – the case of Belo Monte hydroelectric power plant (Pará, Brazil)

The construction of the hydroelectric power plant Belo Monte in the Xingu river basin, Brazil, represents an economic model usually labeled neo-developmentalism, which can be regarded as the Brazilian political and economical elites’ favored development model. Following the logic of “internal colonialism”, it aims at integrating sparsely populated and peripheral regions like the Amazon into national capitalism via neo-extractivist mechanisms and large-scale projects. The example of Belo Monte illustrates that the dispossession of thousands of families – mainly fisher(wo)men, resp. riverines – is not limited to the material sphere. Being forced to leave their homes in Altamira and/or on the surrounding islands, they also have to give up their way of life and their respective identities, neighborhoods, histories etc. The research project analyses these complex forms of dispossession. Based on Butler and Athanasiou (2013), dispossession is conceptualized as a relational and multidimensional process. However, those processes of dispossession are not imposed unilaterally but – in the sense of Arendts (2006[1961]) political action and Tullys (1999) agonic game – occur through diverse forms of contentious negotiation between the responsible consortium, the affected, and other involved actors. In doing so, resistance to dispossession is primarily a struggle for recognition. By analyzing those forms of negotiation, the research projected aims at a conceptual enhancement of the term dispossession which helps to understand the complexity of such large-scale projects and so called processes of development-induced displacement and resettlement.

In residential areas of the broader Brazilian middle class, security policies have been intensified and, particularly, technical security measures have been massively expanded for several years. This progress influences and limits everyday action patterns of the urban population increasingly, and changes communicative and social structures and processes in local urban space intensively. Referring to the discussion of geographical urban and security studies, it is the main purpose of the project to study daily security-oriented actions, at the microscale level of households, neighbourhoods and districts of the urban middle class in the municipality of São Paulo (Brazil), and to understand their interplay with public and private security policies Therefore, it will be interface a human geographical perspective both with actor-oriented as well as praxeological approaches.

Currently, Europe’s urban societies are confronted by massive challenges: economic crises have increased the risk of social dislocation; and political and economic factors have given rise to increasing migratory movements that are generating heterogeneous spaces. In order to prepare graduates for these challenges, the Strategic Partnership „Urban Dynamics“ aims to provide proper formation in the field of socio-cultural urban management. In order to realize its goals, the project team of Kiel University established an interdisciplinary and transnational network. Besides two further European partners – Universidade de Santiago de Compostela and Université Paris 8 –, the Latin American Universidad del Salvador in Buenos Aires and Universidade Federal de Pernambuco in Recife form part of the network. Several learning activities will support students’ international mobility and enable free access to innovative, validatable education materials. The students of the five partner universities will elaborate joint case studies by means of a blended-learning platform. A summer school and a concluding start-up academy will serve to move forward international networking of urban social entrepreneurship. Internships abroad are part of the curriculum, too.

Urban conflicts in Santiago de Chile and Buenos Aires. On the transformation of frameworks and political practices in urban development through social movements and citizens' initiatives.

Urban development conflicts in Latin America are characterised by growing resistance to neoliberal urban logic. It is noticeable that a comparison of different forms of resistance and the associated political effects has so far received little attention in research. While middle (to higher) income strata demand more say in issues such as structural densification and high-rise construction, the demands of marginalised strata refer to issues such as access to decent housing, gentrification and displacement. The research project investigates the extent to which urban conflicts contribute to a change in urban political arrangements and to an emancipation of the urban in depoliticized urban constellations. Four conflicts are being investigated in Santiago de Chile and Buenos Aires. In every city, one conflict is located in a district of the (upper) middle class and another in a poorer to socially heterogeneous part of the city. Theoretically and conceptually, the study uses above all approaches of radical democracy and spatially contentious politics. In order to answer the central research question, a framework analysis is carried out.

Analysis of Informal Dynamics in Mega Urban Areas – Based on Spatial Structure and Steering Mechanisms Focused on Water in the Pearl River Delta

Megacities as new phenomena of global urbanization processes are increasingly characterized by an unprecedented loss of governability and controllability, with the consequence that highly complex mega-urban development processes increasingly take place informally or illegally. Today's megacities are not only subject to a growing concentration of population, infrastructure, economic power and capital or an excessive acceleration of all developments, but above all to a simultaneity and overlapping of various processes with mutual feedback.

The aim of the DFG project is to use the example of the Pearl River Delta in the southern Chinese province of Guangdong to investigate the effects of global change on the development and reorganisation of socio-economic and institutional relationships and to develop theoretical and model approaches that are suitable for the general explanation of informal processes and structures in megacities. The project is carried out in cooperation with colleagues from RWTH Aachen University: Prof. Dr. Rafig Azzam, Chair of Engineering Geology and Hydrogeology (project phases 1-3), and Prof. Dr. Christian L. Krause, Chair of Landscape Architecture (project phase 1).

Housing Submarkets and Rationales behind Local Actions: The Example of the Student Housing Market in Hamburg

In many german university cities the pressure on the housing market has increased over the last years (vgl. BBSR-Analysen KOMPAKT 09/2014). Especially inner city neighborhoods – traditionally prefered by students - are characterised by excess demand for housing. At the same time, the amount of young people, which obtain a university entrance qualification and decide to study, is rising. Therefore, in the following years a constantly high demand of students searching for affordable accomodation can be expected.

Different actors react to this situation: Nonprofit landlords increase their supply, private investors recognize student housing as profitable assett class and local authorities try to direct the demand into neighborhoods, which are not yet in the students' focus. The interaction of local stakeholder actions, the residential distribution of students and their access to the housing market are the main objects of investigation in this research project.

If you are a student in Hamburg and interested in participating in this research project, please follow this link.

City expansion through large-scale projects: Actors, Interests and Strategies in Santiago de Chile

The dissertation project deals with the actor-oriented analysis of the planning of large-scale urban development projects on the outskirts of Santiago de Chile. As in other metropolises in the region, Santiago has for several years been the setting for large-scale private projects of a &#39;quality'; that break with traditional patterns of urban development. Private real estate developers, who often have considerable amounts of international financial capital and locally anchored social capital, initiate, plan and implement new urban districts on the &#39;greenfield site'; as a package solution, i. e. housing projects for up to 100,000 inhabitants each including supply, transport and social infrastructure. While the competent public authorities at regional and national level promote this form of private, island based urban development and make it an official urban development policy, local authorities in the affected districts as well as local residents and other civil society actors are finding it increasingly difficult to make their voice heard.

The interests, strategies and action rationales of the individual public and private actors in the interaction of the different levels of action (local, regional, national) are examined using the example of two municipalities that are subject to particularly strong development pressure and where a whole series of major private projects have already been launched or are about to start construction. To what extent is a new mode of public-private urban development institutionalised in Santiago, and what does this mean for the principles of democratic decision-making such as participation and transparency, which are actively propagated at the urban level in Chile?

In 2010, some 13,000 people occupied the second-largest park in Buenos Aires, located in the most deprived area of the city. The city and state governments reacted with violent repression leading to three deaths. After government officials promised that a housing program would be provided, the problem was viewed as “solved.” However, four years later not a single home had been built. Interpretive frames and political practices in Buenos Aires were influenced by the conflict, and this ultimately strengthened the positions of the national and local governments. This, in turn, intensified structural discrimination against lower-income groups in Buenos Aires. Thus, far from bringing about sustainable housing solutions, the occupation reinforced policies of security and sanction.